Press liberalization in Niger

Africaphiles are often reading disturbing stories about attacks on press freedom on the continent. Even South Africa, arguably the freest state in Africa, recently rammed through a law that was widely denounced as a serious assault on the country's thriving independent media.

So I was pleased to read the following headline in a Zambian newspaper: President of Niger to be first to sign document abolishing barbaric media laws in Africa.

Niger's president Mahamadou Issoufou approved a bill that revoked the country's criminal defamation and insult laws. Such a repeal is one of the major appeals of the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers, which cites the laws as one of the severe threats to media freedom in Africa. By contrast, defamation is a civil offense in most western countries (which means the punishment is monetary, not prison). Criminal defamation laws are a popular tool used by autocratic regimes to silence dissent, by making criticism an imprisonable offense.

Kudos to Pres. Issoufou for the move. Many long-time opposition leaders turn autocratic as soon as they gain power. Senegal's Abdoulaye wade and former Cote d'Ivoire strongman Laurent Gbagbo are just two. So it's gratifying to see Niger's leader bucking the trend.

All that glitters isn't gold

Radio Netherlands Africa service has a story about the problems caused by the gold rush in southeastern Senegal.

Nigeria's exploding population

Nigeria's This Day has a piece on the country's skyrocketing population. There were 140 million Nigerians five years ago but that figure has already risen to nearly 168 million and is expected to hit 221 million by the year 2020. The head of the country's National Population Commission pointed out that this meant that Nigerians represent fully 2.4% of humanity.

Tubman backs Taylor return

There has been a critical international reaction to comments by a Liberian presidential candidate. Winston Tubman, who recently qualified for a run off against the incumbent president and Nobel Peace laureate Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, said that former warlord and dictator Charles Taylor would be free to return to the country. Taylor, an indicted war criminal and convicted scumbag, is presently on trial at the Special Court for Sierra Leone for his widely believed meddling in that country's civil war. He's yet to face trial for his role in his own country's conflict. Taylor's wife, a Liberian senator, is expected to be part of a Tubman administration if he wins. Tubman is a nephew of a former Liberian strongman.

Top Kenyan officials indicted for post-electoral violence

The International Criminal Court recently indicted several Kenyan ex-cabinet ministers for their alleged role in planning the widespread violence that followed the country's 2007 presidential election. Significantly, the former officials were present in the Hague courtroom to answer the charges. Another set of hearings is scheduled for later in the month to deal with other suspects, including sitting Finance Minister Uhuru Kenyatta, a former presidential candidate and son of the country's founding president.

Gbagbos charged

Former Ivorian president Laurent Gbagbo, whose election loss sparked a brief civil war, has been charged by prosecutors with "economic crimes, armed robbery, looting and embezzlement," as was his wife. Pascal Affi N'Guessan, former head of Gbagbo's FPI party, has also been charged with attacking state security following the election defeat.

Male victims of sex crimes in war 'almost equal' number of female victims

In recent years, there's been quite a bit of press coverage of the rape and sexual assault against women during war time, and rightly so. However, there's virtually no awareness of such crimes against men. Both al-Jazeera (here) and the UK Observer (here) have done pieces on this mostly ignored scourge.

Both news outlets report the claim that sex crimes against men during war is nearly as common as those against women, some of the victims having been gang raped repeatedly for months or even years.

But The Observer points out that the problem is so little thought of that such statistics are hard to find. Because there has been so little research into the rape of men during war, it's not possible to say with any certainty why it happens or even how common it is – although a rare 2010 survey, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, found that 22% of men and 30% of women in Eastern Congo reported conflict-related sexual violence.


They note that, in addition to the taboos (and in some places, laws) preventing many such men from getting help, many non-governmental organizations are set up to help female victims of sex crimes but not males.

"The organisations working on sexual violence don't talk about it," says Chris Dolan, director of the Refugee Law Project (RLP) at the Makerere University in Uganda.

But it goes beyond not talking about it to an active muzzling of reality.

"I know for a fact that the people behind [a 2006 United Nations] report insisted the definition of rape be restricted to women," [Dolan] says, adding that one of the RLP's donors, Dutch Oxfam, refused to provide any more funding unless he'd promise that 70% of his client base was female.

The Observer article concludes depressingly: Before receiving help from the RLP, one man went to see his local doctor. He told him he had been raped four times, that he was injured and depressed and his wife had threatened to leave him. The doctor gave him a Panadol.

Congratulations South Sudan

Congratulations to the Republic of South Sudan, the world's newest nation, which achieved independence today. To the country's government: it took you a long time to get to this day. Don't screw it up.

Arrest warrant for Blé Goudé

An international arrest warrant has been issued for Charles Blé Goudé, one of Côte d'Ivoire's most notorious criminals. Blé Goudé (age 39) is the long-time leader of the 'Jeunes patriotes' (Young Patriots), a group that's little more than an armed gang affiliated with whichever political group claims the nationalist/xenophobic mantle. He was a close ally of the recently defeated president Laurent Gbagbo. The prosecutor accused Blé Goudé of inciting xenophobia and ethnic violence during the clashes in which Gbagbo supporters tried to cling to power following the election defeat.

The new African land grab, brought to you by Harvard

The UK Guardian has a disturbing piece on how many prestigious US universities, including Harvard and Vanderbilt, are collaborating with European speculators to buy or lease large chunks of land in Africa thus forcing thousands of locals off the land.

Jos

The BBC World Service’s Assignment program has a good documentary on sectarian divisions that persist in the Nigerian city of Jos.

You read it here first!

A few days ago, I read a very interesting piece on al-Jazeera’s website about hate media in Ivory Coast.

It reminded me a lot of a piece I published over six years ago on the exact same topic.

The Kinshasa Symphony

The public radio program Studio 360 has a piece on a fascinating documentary about the Kinshasa Symphony Orchestra, in the Democratic Republic of Congo's capital. It's a compelling story from a country more known for less pleasant things.

The real Africa is hidden

The Columbia Journalism Review has a great piece on why non-governmental organizations prefer bad news about Africa and how that prevents westerners from getting a more nuanced picture about life on the continent.

Rapes and murders by Gbagbo's thugs

Human Rights Watch has detailed atrocities, including murder and rape, committed by forces loyal to Laurent Gbagbo, Cote d'Ivoire's former president who's bloodily clinging to power following an election defeat last year.

Illegitimate Gbagbo's bloody hands cling to power

While the murderous Muammar Gadhafhi has received most of the international press attention, former Ivorian president Laurent Gbagbo's blood lust for power is equally bloody. Gbagbo was defeated at the polls last November by opposition leader Alasanne Ouatarra but steadfastly refuses to give up power.

Most recently, his insecurity forces mowed down at least five women in the main city of Abidjan who were marching in support of President-elect Ouatarra.

Yesterday, Gbagbo's regime ordered that water and electricity be cut to the northern half of Cote d'Ivoire, Ouatarra's stronghold. I'm not sure if this fits the legal definition of a war crime (and make no mistake about it, Gbagbo views his quest for power as a war to be won at all costs) but it certainly re-inforces how illegitimate his regime is.

He is clearly afraid of the truth, which is why his regime kicked the BBC World Service and Radio France Internationale off the country's FM airwaves. Though if my forces were slaughtering women, I wouldn't want the outside world to know about it either.

But Gbagbo's thugs don't just target women, they target all opponents. The Associated Press reported on evidence of mass killings of those presumed to be Ouatarra supporters in the aftermath of the controversial election.

Africans embrace democracy while the African Union rejects it

The former Organization for African Unity was often derided as a club for dictators. The organization rebranded itself the African Union several years ago in an attempt to start afresh. It was part of a trend at the time where pan-African institutions were created (such as the New Partnership for African Development, NEPAD) or reformed (such as the AU) to purportedly do more self-policing on issues like human rights and good governance.

So it was quite sickening to read that the AU named Equatorial Guinea’s longtime dictator Teodoro Obiang Nguema as its new president. Although the position is mostly ceremonial, it’s a slap in the face to give such a platform to the head of one of the world’s three most repressive regimes. As a man who seized power in a coup in 1979 and has brutally cracked down on all opposition, with what authority can he lecture Côte d’Ivoire’s recalcitrant former president Laurent Gbagbo or the generals in Cairo? With one of the world’s most abominable human rights record, how can he speak on northern Uganda or the Central African Republic or the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo?

While Africans from Tunisia to Egypt are courageously rising up to embrace democracy, it’s a revolting sight to see the AU so strongly cravenly reject it.

There's something about Tunisia

Something's happening in Tunisia.

That statement alone is pretty significant, since it concerns one of the world's most tightly controlled police states.

The north African state has been controlled by two dictators since independence in 1956. First was Habib Bourguiba, who ran the country from 1956 until he was removed for 'health' reasons in 1987 by his prime minister Zine el Abidine Ben Ali, who still rules today. The country is so rigidly monitored that it's said that Ben Ali, a former intelligence chief, personally reviews logs of who entered and left the country via the main international airport.

But after nearly a quarter century, Tunisians appear to be fed up with Ben Ali's regime. As The New York Times described the situation: unisia also has one of the most repressive governments in a region full of police states. Residents long tolerated extensive surveillance, scant civil liberties and the routine use of torture, at least until the economic malaise that has gripped southern Europe spread here, sending unemployment and public resentment skyrocketing.

The current crisis started when an unemployed university graduate set himself on fire after police refused to allow him to scratch out a meager living selling fruits and vegetables on the street because he lacked paperwork.

Protests erupted, spread by social media, since the traditional media is heavily censored. The protests were dealt with in the way that autocratic regimes usually deal with such displays: brute force. People were killed, which fueled even more fury and resentment. To no one's surprise, Ben Ali initially blamed the unrest of foreign elements and terrorists.

(Foreign Policy has a good analysis of Tunisia's socioeconomic problems and other catalysts of the protests.)

Then an unusual thing happened, the dictatorship blinked.

A chastened Ben Ali went on national television and promised not to run again for the presidency in 2014, to ease censorship and apologized for the abuses of the insecurity forces.

Many are skeptical of the dictator's promises, especially after several people were shot by men in uniform not long after Ben Ali's speech; a human rights' organization counts 66 confirmed deaths since the unrest began on December 17. There's the added factor that Ben Ali's family has a stranglehold on the Tunisian economy (some are describing this as the first Wikileaks' Revolution) and won't relinquish that easily.

The protesters aren't satisfied. They want Ben Ali to give up power now.

Still, it's a remarkable climbdown for a strongman who had, not long prior, so vehemently denounced the protests.

In the blogosphere, there's some interesting discussions about social media and the Tunisia situation.

Ethan of My Heart's in Accra worries that no one is paying attention. Even the normally excellent BBC World Service had virtually nothing on it, at least that I heard, for the first several weeks of the protests.

George Brock of 21st Century Journalism counters that whether the events in Tunisia are noticed in the west or not misses the point. It's the empowerment that matters. Much inflated hyperbole is talked about the effect of social media on politics and society in Europe and the US. But here in the Middle East, it is impossible exaggerate the importance – actual and potential – of informal media, he explains.


Update: Today, Ben Ali has declared a state of emergency, sacked the entire government (except himself of course) and called for new elections within six months.

Further update: Ben Ali has apparently resigned and fled the country. His prime minister, a close ally, has assumed the acting presidency, though there is some doubt as to whether this is constitutional.

Third update: Tunisia's high court has appointed the parliamentary speaker as acting president.

US slaps sanctions on Gbagbo

The United States has improsed sanctions on Cote d'Ivoire's former president Laurent Gbagbo, who lost elections late last year but refuses to cede power. The punishment also applies to several members of Gbagbo's inner circle, including his wife and the leader of his party. As a result, Americans are are prohibited from conducting financial or commercial transactions with the designated individuals, and any assets of the designees within U.S. jurisdiction are frozen, according to the State Department.